


Gravitational Songs

by sunstonesea



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hate Sex, Sexual Content, Violence, tl;dr: They beat each other up and then they fuck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 22:42:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11610462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunstonesea/pseuds/sunstonesea
Summary: Two black holes collide.





	Gravitational Songs

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by "Colliding Black Holes May Sing Different Gravitational Songs", the weirdly beautiful title of this space.com article by Calla Cofield. https://shar.es/1lP1hU
> 
> Yet to be finished, but at least one more chapter (of gratuitous hatefucking) is on its way, and more are planned, but not set in stone.
> 
> Edit 3/10/18: lol damn I knew I shouldn't have uploaded this before finishing it. I'll get around to wrapping it up eventually. It's there in my head and I have notes for the "plot". writing is hard though

Draco is every bit as surprised as she is when he rounds a Knockturn corner, recognises her, and wrenches her wand away with a shouted _Expelliarmus!_ before he even realises he's speaking. He's so startled that he misses the wand as it spins through the air, and it smacks him hard in the chest before he catches it.

It's round and smooth, strangely heavy in his hand, and as he stares at its owner, he's thrown by the contrast: she's whip-thin, the thin of illness rather than fitness, and for a moment he can imagine a strong wind hurtling through the alley and whisking her up into the sky. The thought that crowds his mind is that she does not look like a legend. Hermione Granger has turned hard and snarling, become all angles of bone and joints and bitter fury. It lines her face and pinches at her mouth. Malice glitters like ice in her eyes.

Just a year ago, he would have seen the likeness between her and her wand. A year ago he'd looked at her and he'd still seen round, smooth, whole—had seen her soft and maybe even lovely, like he'd first thought on the night of the Yule Ball. But that single year has been a thousand for Granger, and there's no more softness now. On her lips is a savage twist that unnerves him, even though she's unarmed. "Go on, Malfoy," she challenges, her voice coming low and rough. Draco remembers high and shrill, and the unexpected sound makes him start. "Sectumsempra," she says, smiling wickedly as her hand makes a slicing motion across her neck. "Your father." She tilts her head up so he can see the thick white scar on her throat, moving when she swallows.

"My father is dead," he says before he can think better of it, and although he'd thought she couldn't surprise him more, the bark of her gleeful laugh cuts him to the bone.

She's watching him keenly, revelling in his discomfiture. "Am I supposed to offer you my sympathies?" she asks, her voice saccharine. "Say my condolences? Comfort you for your loss? Oh, I'm so sorry that your gutless, murdering, Death Eater father is now in the ground like the worm he is."

His fingers go white around her wand, still clutched in his free hand. "Don't talk about my father like that."

She looks at him with eyes of stone. "Doesn't the truth hurt?"

"My father only wanted to—" he begins, but Granger begins to laugh and doesn't stop, until the sound is nearly hysterical.

"Don't you remember anything about me, Malfoy?" She spits his name as if it stings her tongue. "I'm always right. So trust me, Malfoy—this is the truth. How many did your father kill because he was too weak to say no? Susan Bones. Padma Patil. Blaise Zabini," she says, smiling when he flinches. Her eyes drift almost closed, and her voice, when it comes, is just a whisper. "Ron Weasley."

He can only stare at her, struck dumb by her pain and her anger and her stupid Gryffindor courage. She doesn't open her eyes. They clutch the memories of dead fathers and dead friends close, and they're speechless together for a moment that stretches into minutes, days, years.

"Why?" The word tears out of his mouth like a barbed thing. "Why keep fighting? All your friends are dead. How many more is it going to take?"

When she laughs this time, it's just a hoarse rasp. "Not all. Not yet."

Draco's heard the rumour that Potter is still alive, secreted in a safe-house where half the senior staff of St. Mungo's is trying to bring him out of a coma. With an arrogance that he doesn't feel, he raises his wand almost lazily and trains it on her chest. "It's over," he says.

"Are you going to kill me, Malfoy?" she sneers, the words ugly on her lips, and he's stung by the insulting ring in her voice. "Been practicing since you failed on the Astronomy Tower, have you? Father help you murder some schoolchildren to brush up?"

A thrust of his wand sends her flying backward to strike the stones, her skull making a _crack_ that echoes through the alleyway. His stomach gives a lurch, but he forces himself to step forward, wandpoint never leaving her as she drags herself unsteadily to her hands and knees.

Far from a grimace of pain, she's—grinning at him, through her mass of hair, an animal baring of teeth that makes his hand tighten on his wand. "Call him, then," she says, as imperious as any pureblood matriarch even with blood streaming from her head, dark in the dim light. "Call your snake bastard of a master and we'll have done with this."

Strangely, it reminds him of his mother, and the command in her voice makes his hand jerk unconsciously towards the Mark twining sinuously under his sleeve. He knows what will come next if he presses his fingers to it and says her name. Voldemort will be there in an instant, and the Death Eaters will follow, many more than would ever be needed for one unarmed witch. She will not be able to fight them. They will take her back to the Manor— _his_ Manor—and torture her to the point of death. Then Voldemort will make her scream until her voice is gone, and then at last he will kill her, and he will send her broken body to what is left of the Order of the Phoenix.

The world swings dizzily around him and the moment that he holds in his hands. With Potter useless and Weasley dead, Granger is the Order's most powerful symbol and one of its few remaining fighters. Without her, perhaps the Order will crumble. Without her, perhaps Voldemort will win.

His mother's face swims into his mind, drawn and pale, her eyes darting between the guests in her home as if they were barely tethered beasts. Draco locks eyes with Granger, grey meeting hard brown, and he makes sure she's watching before he breaks the vinewood wand with a single slash of his own. The pieces clatter to the cobblestones, and her face crumples like parchment. "Now we're done."

She flings herself forward, scrabbling for the halves of her wand. For a moment, his gaze lingers on her, this hard-and-soft woman, and on the blood smeared across her forehead. " _Fuck you_ —" she says, raising her hand for some wandless spell, but the _crack_ of his Disapparation cuts her off, and the last thing he sees before he spins away is his name on her lips.


End file.
